Tonight the Prank Queen Is the Joke

Elise's POV

"Thanksgiving's at Garrett's new place this year!"

My sister Paisley dropped a location pin in the family group chat, followed by a string of party emojis. My fiancé, Garrett, ran a real estate company, and the pin pointed to a model home they'd just finished building.

That evening, I grabbed a pumpkin pie fresh out of the oven and caught a rideshare to the address. When we got there, the driver let me out and drove off.

But there was no house in front of me. Just a ring of chain-link fence around an abandoned foundation overgrown with weeds.

On my phone, Paisley had her livestream camera shoved right in her grinning face. She'd built a following of a few hundred thousand off prank videos.

"Look, you guys, my sister fell for it again!"

The camera swung around. My parents were cracking up and pounding the table. Mom wiped tears from her eyes. "How is she this gullible? Where does she even get it from?"

I called Garrett. He was my last hope.

"Elise, your parents say you're on your own getting home." He sounded bored. "We've done this a million times. Don't be such a sore loser."

I'd lost count of how many times Paisley had pranked me growing up. And every single time, the whole family had been right there clapping.

The old me would've called back in tears, begging them to come get me.

This time, I set the pumpkin pie down on the concrete, turned around, and started walking away from home.

What they didn't know was that tonight, I wasn't going to be the one who lost.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened an app that showed the security camera feed from the house.

On the screen, the turkey had just hit the table, and Paisley was holding up her phone, yelling at the camera. "Okay, okay, time to place your bets!"

"Ninety seconds. My money's on ninety seconds."

She'd put up a poll on the stream so her viewers could bet along with the family on how long it'd take me to call back and cave.

In the corner of the screen, the vote count kept climbing while the comments scrolled by nonstop.

Ninety seconds.

On my tenth birthday, Paisley fed my puppy a whole bar of dark chocolate. He was the only friend I'd had since Grandma died. He threw up until he was shaking all over, and I held him and begged my parents to drive us to the emergency vet. Dad didn't even look up. "She's just messing with you. If it dies, we'll get you another one."

He struggled in my arms for ninety seconds. Then he stopped moving.

Nobody ever mentioned that new puppy again.

"Ten minutes," my parents said at the same time.

The year I was sixteen, on the night before Thanksgiving, Paisley spiked my soda with antifreeze. I spent ten minutes curled up on the kitchen floor, clutching my stomach, before I could choke out the words "I give up."

I got my stomach pumped at the hospital that night. When the nurse asked where my parents were, all I could say was that they were busy. The next morning, they drove into the city for the parade like always.

After that, I always found an excuse not to go home for Thanksgiving. Every year, Garrett cleared his schedule and had a low-key dinner with me at my apartment. He'd order a small turkey dinner ahead of time and tell me Thanksgiving with just the two of us still counted.

This year, he said he wanted to show me the new model home he'd built. That was the only reason I'd said yes to Paisley.

This whole time, Garrett had been sitting at the table without saying a word.

All of a sudden, he got up, walked to the door, and took his coat off the rack.

My heart jumped into my throat. My finger was already on the button to share my location. For a second, I even thought that if he got in the car and came for me right then, I could let everything else go.

But he didn't leave. He just pulled his phone out of his coat pocket and started typing fast.

"I bet she can't even make a call tonight."

He didn't look up. "That site's my project. The only signal out there comes from a booster on the sales trailer. I just had the site manager go pull the plug. Once it hits midnight, that whole place is a dead zone."

A chill ran down my spine.

Paisley squealed and threw her arms around him. "I knew there was a reason you made me change the address to your site!"

"Oh my God, you're evil! You have to be a regular on my channel!"

Mom and Dad laughed and raised their glasses to him.

I stared at that familiar face on the screen.

Last year, I'd told him I wanted to come see one of his projects. His face went hard and he said no. He said homeless people camped out at abandoned sites all the time, and there were coyotes at night. It was way too dangerous for a woman to go out there alone.

So the danger only counted when he felt like protecting me.

It wasn't that he didn't know how scary this place was. He just thought making Paisley happy mattered more.

A cheer went up at the table. The four of them piled into a group hug, celebrating the newest prank master in the family.

I closed the camera feed. I'd seen enough.

With one bar of signal left, I dug up an email that had been sitting in my inbox for almost a month.

A pastry shop in Paris had offered me a ten-year contract. I'd leave in three days, and they'd cover my housing and work visa. All they needed was my answer. I hadn't answered yet because I couldn't let go of the idea of all of us sitting around the table together on Thanksgiving.

But at that table, I'd only ever been the entertainment.

I typed "I accept" and hit send.

The moment the progress bar filled, the little girl in me who'd always stood at the door, waiting for someone to come get her, finally turned around and went back inside.

At midnight on the dot, the signal on my screen disappeared.

It was so dark I couldn't see a thing. I'd been scared of the dark since I was little, and every one of them knew it.

I felt around in a pile of scrap until I found a piece of rebar. I gripped it tight and inched forward, one step at a time.

The wind whistled through the chain-link fence.

But the longer I walked, the steadier my heartbeat got.

When there's no one left behind you to turn back to, the only way left is forward.